Author's posts
Focusing on the frontlines of COVID leaves behind those with disabilities and chronic illness
COVID has focused attention on the frontlines. However, this focus ignores those with chronic health needs and disabilities. People with these conditions are left unable to continue their care or to seek care for new exacerbations. People are avoiding …
Religion and spirituality are in the exam room
Religion and spirituality play a role in both patient’s and provider’s lives. Despite this, medical school is usually an atheistic experience. I went to a state-run medical school. No consideration of religion happened throughout my entire medical scho…
The re-education of a physician into the school of pain
Since childhood, I have suffered from severe stabbing headaches. Then in my first year of medical school in anatomy, as we peeled back the scalp of our cadaver, I saw a nerve poking out of a muscle on the back of the skull. With a flash, I knew that I …
People who take opioids are the AIDS patients of today
Stigma towards health conditions interferes with access to compassionate care. Both social stigmas from friends and family and medical stigma from professionals are issues. Perhaps the worst recent example of medical stigma is how people with HIV/AIDS …
Adverse childhood experiences: How changing a child’s environment can help
Some children present to me with complex problems or multiple problems that fail to resolve after the typical interventions. I recall a child with severe abdominal pain. He had tried numerous medicines and had had scopes and studies galore. It had reac…
How music transformed this physician
I have had a complex relationship with music. As a child, I had several instances of feedback that I was “bad at music.” When my class would sing at assemblies, I would get side glances and subtle and not so subtle clues that I should be at the edges a…
